


Yuletide in Jungby

by MarkoftheAsphodel



Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: Seisen no Keifu | Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War
Genre: Arranged Marriage, Eventual Happy Ending, F/M, Family Issues
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-02-21
Updated: 2016-07-30
Packaged: 2018-05-22 12:19:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,877
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6079059
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MarkoftheAsphodel/pseuds/MarkoftheAsphodel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Faval invites his far-flung clan to Jungby for the holidays and is surprised and mostly delighted when almost everyone shows up. He should've expected some of those present to have ulterior motives. When you're part of a Crusader family, there's always ulterior motives.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This contains spoilers for the big secret plot twist in FE5 and that twist is embedded in the overall plot 
> 
> Just to get this outta the way, the background pairings are as follows:
> 
> Claude/Aideen/Midayle, with Aideen/Midayle occurring after the BBQ  
> Briggid/Finn  
> Seliph/Lana  
> Patty/Cairpre  
> Leif/Nanna
> 
> This is more or less a sequel to a couple of other 'fics I have using these base pairings. Once I pick pairings and such I like to play in a single continuity for a while.

_December, 786_

When he looked at his mother, Faval almost convinced himself it wasn’t a mistake to invite the entire family to his place for Yule. Duchess Briggid the First of Jungby, otherwise known as Mum, sat by the hearth with one of the castle cats in her lap. She had her eyes closed and her head tipped back and was stroking the cat’s gray plushy fur like there was nothing better to do in the entire world. The cat looked at Faval with narrow coppery eyes that let him know that Kitty was just as pleased with life in that moment as the duchess.

On the other side of the room, Faval’s father was catching up on things with Auntie Aideen and Sir Midayle, while Cousin Lester and Sister Mareeta played _pachisi_ off in the corner. And his youngest cousin was down on the floor playing with kittens, which meant everyone Faval expected to show up had actually come to visit.

(Faval did not expect Cousin Lana or her husband the Emperor of Grannvale to drop by Jungby, because he wasn’t stupid. And his other sister Patty and her husband were off in western Thracia spending the holidays with Cairpre’s father.)

Faval invited everyone he’d felt obliged to, which was rather a lot of people, but he’d only planned on a few showing up, and honestly he was surprised at Lester because really they’d gotten sick of one another during their mission in Verdane. He wasn’t sorry, though, because he knew Mum and Auntie wanted to see all the Jungby family at peace and happy, and here they were.

He was also surprised at Mareeta. In all her travels she’d never come to Jungby before.

Faval, forgetting himself and his place yet again, settled down on the carpet at his mother’s feet. The cat’s purring and the crackles of the fire lulled him into an almost dreamy state, but Lester would make fun of him if Faval fell asleep like that. 

“Thanks for coming all this way, Mum.”

“Of course.” Faval felt the touch of his mother’s fingers on his hair and he leaned back into it.

“Wouldn’t have blamed you if you’d stayed at Patty’s. The food’s probably better at her place anyway.”

His mother didn’t say anything. The happy purring cat and the reassuring caress of Briggid’s fingers let Faval know that, this one time, Patty’s Yuletide table could wait. 

-x-

Faval began the next day in a less happy mood because he had to get up before dawn to join Lester and Auntie Aideen in the chapel. Duke Faval’s relationship to the Edda Church was one of those sticky issues that hadn’t been worked out to anyone’s pleasure yet, but with the head of the Church staying under his roof, Faval had to at least make an appearance at services. His aunt was there, of course, and she’d brought Sir Midayle and their son Angus, which Faval expected.

He didn’t expect Mareeta.

“I didn’t know you’d joined the Edda Church,” Faval said out of the side of his mouth while his eyes stayed on Lester at the altar.

“I didn’t,” she said, and as Faval stole a peek at her, he thought he saw a little blush rising in her face. “But it interests me, and I’ve met some wonderful people from the Church.”

Faval figured she meant that priest, Sleuf or Sroufe for whatever his name was, who was going all over Thracia spreading Saint Bragi’s teachings. Patty mentioned him a lot in her letters. He did not assume for one moment she meant Cousin Lester.

-x-

Faval didn’t ask either of his parents why they hadn’t gone to church to see Lester do his Head of House Edda duties in gold-embroidered robes. He mentioned in passing at breakfast that Lester put on a pretty good show, and got a little smile out of his mother and an even littler “hm” out of his father, which was about what he expected. 

All in all, things were going well, Faval decided as he surveyed the breakfast table. The cooks had managed to get the thick chewy buns filled with currants and candied fruit just right, so they looked like the ones piled high in the shop windows back in Connaught and tasted even better. Everyone was behaving right down to the kid. Nobody was asking uncomfortable questions of Faval or of anyone else.  
 This feeling of goodwill lasted until Sir Midayle (Faval guessed he was supposed to think of him as Uncle Midayle but nobody was enforcing that) went and asked if Faval had any plans for taking a bride.

Faval swallowed his mouthful of bun and currants and took his time washing down the crumbs with a gulp of mead.

“No,” he said, and filled his mouth again with a currant bun.

That also made his mother smile, and something about that stayed with Faval in a way that wasn’t really comfortable. He spent the rest of breakfast focusing on the food and the mead and trying not to look at anyone except for young Angus, who didn’t want anything out of him other than more time playing with the kittens and maybe a visit to the stables to admire Jungby’s finely-bred horses.

“He’s already showing promise as a rider,” said Uncle Midayle in his well-meant way.

“That’s great,” Faval replied. He never had liked horses, and knew damn well that was a mark against him in the eyes of everyone except for Mum and Patty, and Patty wasn’t there.

-x-

After breakfast, Faval told Uncle Midayle it was all right to let Angus visit the horses. Midayle knew his way around the stables and Faval didn’t feel obliged to play host. Mum and Aunt Aideen retreated to do some motherly/auntie things and asked Mareeta to join them, and Lester went off to do something presumably holy— Faval didn’t know and didn’t care. That left his father to contend with, and Faval had decided to fill that particular space up by treating Finn to a grand tour of the property so he could show that he was being a perfectly capable Lord of Jungby in spite of everything stacked against him when he’d taken over the place.

There hadn’t been a Siege of Jungby during the Holy War, so out of the New Crusaders, Faval alone got to walk into a castle that hadn’t been trashed, a world where everything was already working and everyone knew their place. He was the one who’d been expected to rise to his new status, and in some ways that was worse than starting over from ruins. If Jungby broke now, it was all on him, and Faval knew it.

“So we found the state portrait of Grandpa and put it back where it belongs,” he said to Finn as they walked down the Long Gallery, where all Faval’s ancestors going back to the archer-goddess herself lined the walls. 

“I see you also removed any trace of Duke Andrei and his son,” Finn replied as he looked past the portrait of Duke Ring to a pair of empty spaces in the gallery. 

“Of course. They were usurpers.” That was one of Faval’s very first commands— get all trace of the rotten branch of the family gone from his sight.

“And yet, they did rule with the blessing of the king and the emperor.”

“The emperor was a—” Faval cut himself off and decided to take a more technical angle. “Hang on, he was a usurper, too. His marriage to Empress Deirdre wasn’t even legal.” 

“We do acknowledge him as Emperor of Grannvale nonetheless.”

“Are you saying the right thing to do is to put Andrei and Scorpio back on the walls? I don’t want to see their ugly faces and I bet Mum doesn’t either.”

“A bad duke remains a duke, and as the Head of House you must cultivate respect for the office regardless of your personal feeling,” said his father.

Faval sensed he wasn’t going to win this one. He sighed to himself and resolved to ask the castle steward to retrieve the banished portraits from the cellar. He could always take them down as soon as his parents were gone.

-x-

After that, Faval was almost happy to play host at tea with the noble ladies. He didn’t have Patty’s knack in the kitchen, but he’d assembled the sort of holiday tea he’d only known from nursery rhymes as a kid growing up in Connaught. He’d ordered the conservatory filled with the red and white lilies that bloomed in the winter. Dishes of gold and silver almonds glittered in between the flower pots and his aunt’s favorite shortbread cookies were arranged on a tray so they too looked like the pink and yellow petals of a giant flower.

Mum and Auntie Aideen were both charmed by it and began to talk of holiday teas back when they were little girls. Faval sat back and watched the strange mirror they made of one another as they talked— faces the same but every gesture different, voices so close to one another and different in so many ways. He felt like he’d done something right in transporting them back in time, like he’d managed to erase the years stained by murder and treason and exile for a couple of hours. Portraits in the gallery be damned.

As wonderful as it was to see his mother and aunt like this, Faval kept glancing over at Mareeta. She was wearing a party frock the color of mint leaves, and he couldn’t recall seeing his foster-sister in a dress before. Everything she said and every move she made was a little forced, he thought, like she was trying as hard as she could to be a noble lady who belonged in a castle. Faval recognized it because it was how he felt most days.

Given everything she’d lived through, it was almost shameful to see Mareeta fretting over spilled tea and shortbread crumbs.

“It’s okay,” Faval said to her as he brushed some of the crumbs off her sleeve. “Deep down, I’m still the son of a pirate, you know?”

She smiled at him then in a way that made Faval feel he really had thrown her a lifeline.

**To Be Continued**


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Auntie Aideen has a proposal.

Faval offered his arm to Auntie Aideen as they rose from the tea-table and to his surprise she steered him not back toward the guest apartments but down the corridor to the Long Gallery.

 _Don’t ask about the stupid portraits_ , Faval thought to himself, but his aunt had other things entirely on her mind.

“Angus was taken with one of the geldings,” she said as they passed by the space on the wall where Uncle Andrei was supposed to be without even slowing their pace. “The dapple gray with black ears.”

“Yeah, he’s a nice horse,” said Faval, for what little weight that his judgment on horseflesh even had. It was telling he didn’t remember the name of the dapple gray. “You know, if you have the place to keep a horse, I could let Angus take him home.”

Auntie and her household spent about half the year in Edda and the rest in Behalla with Cousin Lana, but it wasn’t like those palaces didn’t have stables, and besides that, Angus could ride the dapple gray from place to place instead of going in a carriage. So it surprised Faval a little when his aunt declined the offer.

“Actually, Faval, I was wondering if you might not have room for Angus in your household.”

“Room? Sure I do.” It took him a moment to realize she didn’t just mean a spare bedroom— of which Faval had plenty. “It’s been weird staying in a big place like this without kids hanging off all the furniture. I mean, sure there’s kids here, but they all try to stay quiet and out of sight.”

His aunt made the little patient smile that Faval got from people when he let on he didn’t understand something about lordship, but she didn’t interrupt him.

“Me and Patty both invited the kids from the orphanage to come stay with us and enjoy our good fortune,” he added. “A couple of them went to Patty’s new place, but nobody wanted to come here. Jungby was just too far-off and strange and… not Connaught.”

“It was generous of you,” Auntie Aideen said, like she understood Faval hadn’t told the story to anyone before and so never had been praised (or scolded) for it.

“I guess it made me kind of sad,” Faval said, because why not keep on confessing once he’d started? “Nobody’s dreams were big enough to reach beyond Thracia, but at the same time it made sense to me. We had a few dreamers, and they ended up dead, you know? Patty was the only one who really managed to skate through.”

“This world is not kind to dreamers,” said Auntie Aideen, and Faval thought for a moment she was looking past him, _through_ him, at something else entirely. “And when you learned the truth for you both, it was even more strange than the dreams of any orphan in Connaught…”

“Right! It never even crossed my mind that I could just haul off and _shoot_ Blume until the day I did it.” Faval’s fingers twitched as they remembered that moment in some way apart from the memories in his head. “Maybe that part of the war could’ve been over quicker than it was if I’d been able to dream bigger, see beyond just putting food on the table and keeping the orphanage from falling down around our ears. But I couldn’t.”

“The best you could do was enough,” Auntie Aideen said, and as she touched his cheek her hand was more gentle than his mother’s but somehow shored up his nerve even better.

Faval could only blink and smile at her; the Duchess Mother of Edda shouldn’t have had any great holy powers of her own, but his aunt’s blessing felt like an especially powerful protection.

“Yeah, Angus can come here and train with me. It’ll be nice to have someone to look after.”

She never mentioned the other cousin, the one he’d killed and left for the crows. His hands remembered that one in their finger-bones, too.

-x-

At dinner that night it was clear enough that Auntie Aideen’d told Angus the good news. The littlest of of Jungby cousins was pretty quiet most of the time, but right now the gray-green eyes peeping out from under his mop of curls looked especially big and shiny and he probably said more things over soup than he usually did in a day. Faval felt more tolerant than interested as he listened, but he figured that would change as he got to know Angus better. Angus only wound down after the last of the main courses got cleared away and the servers brought in bowls of fondant cut into amusing shapes and pistachios with their shells dyed red and green. The fondant was supposed to be from his grandmother’s recipe, so Faval was hoping Mum and Auntie Aideen would remember the taste, but it must not have come out right because they didn’t say anything. Auntie was busy shelling nuts both for herself and for Midayle, and Midayle in turn would slip a few nuts to Angus with his good hand every now and again. Faval made himself take note of it so he’d remember not to let Angus go wild over sweets the way Patty always did when they scored any.

On the other side of the table, Mareeta was the one with her dark head bent over a bowl of nuts, shelling them so Mum wouldn’t have to get her hands smudged up with pink and green. Faval didn’t need to ever ask who the Good Daughter was, because Mareeta let him know it just by…being. Mareeta was dutiful and good and worked hard to master herself, Patty was gutsy and clever and found ways of getting things done that weren’t entirely good… and Duke Faval of Jungby was in there trying.

He should’ve thought of shelling nuts for Mum, but being the lord of Jungby meant people looked sideways at him whenever he did things that should’ve been normal, even now. And being around Mum lulled him into into not doing things, sometimes, because she just gave off the impression she didn’t need anything from anyone. Not in a cold way or a bad way, just in the sense that she already had everything she could possibly need. But Mareeta must’ve known better, so Mareeta got her fingernails dirty shelling pistachios, and Faval sat back with his glass of brandy and took in the sight of a reasonably happy family under his roof.

“This is as good as it’s ever gonna get,” he said under his breath. He expected that to draw a sharp look from his father, or maybe from Lester, but Mareeta was the one to glance his way. Faval grinned and tipped his glass in her direction, and she smiled back in a way that he puzzled over the remainder of the night.

It wasn’t sisterly.

**Author's Note:**

> Religion in Jugdral is all mixed up what with the original Sky God, the various dragon "gods" and then all the deified Crusaders and heroes. But FE5's ending mentions that the Edda Church became the major religion in the continent after the game event, which means it wasn't the major religion to start with. The Jungby family clearly revered Saint Bragi, given Duke Ring brought his kids along on a pilgrimage that ended in pirate attack, but Thracians appear to revere the Earth Mother Ethnia and Finn specifically refers to Crusader Nova as an "Earth Goddess" and asks for her blessing in other published sources so I'm working with the assumption not everyone is in the same church to start with.


End file.
